Policy History:Philosophy
From Policy History
Contents |
Dual Purpose
The stated design of the government of the United States of America is a government "of the People, by the People, and for the People," however much of the inner workings of the government is purposefully obscured from easy public access. One purpose of Policy History is to scour all available sources of information on these inner workings, and present them to the public.
However, just presenting government documents to the public is not enough. Since most are not educated on how to read complex legal documents, and since most of these don't have the time to learn, the second purpose of Policy History is to translate government documents into normal parlance and provide objective commentary on their significance.
Goals
Policy History has numerous short-term, long-term, and "horizon" goals.
Short-Term Goals
- Create a page for every senator, representative, influential executive committee member, and federal judge currently in the government.
- For senators and representatives, document voting history on major past bills and report on new bills as they are voted on.
- For executive committee members, archive major past documents signed by them, and archive current documents as they are created and signed.
- For judges, archive major historical rulings made by them (or opinions or dissenting opinions), and archive current decisions as they are made.
- Archive major legislature as it is discussed in Congress (and devise an intuitive method of archiving different versions of the same document).
- As a corollary, find or design a metric to decide order-of-importance for archiving documents as they are created by Congress and the larger government.
Long-Term Goals
- Archive as many historical documents as are available.
- Create pages for past congressmen, judges, etc. documenting their governmental activities during their careers.
Horizon Goals
Horizon goals are goals beyond long term goals. Though their realization is desired, horizon goals are of such a magnitude that no reasonable time frame can be given for achieving them. Horizon goals are just too far off at this moment to predict when they will be achieved.
- Archive every government document ever created.
- For every document, make sure some Tier 1 article exists that describes the purpose and significance of that document.
